


Some Evil in the Best of Us

by blcwriter



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Explicit Language, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:34:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26607565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blcwriter/pseuds/blcwriter
Summary: James Copley, before and during his realization that this is a very, very bad idea.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 67





	Some Evil in the Best of Us

It occurs to him as he’s videoconferencing with Merrick and Keane to plan the ambush that this may be a very, very bad idea. 

“No, it’s got to be, like, Boko Harambe or whatever they are,” Merrick spits, attention drawn by whatever stock exchange is scrolling on his side of the screen.

“That’s in Nigeria,” James starts to correct, only for Keane to make eye contact with the expression of “don’t bother arguing with idiot civilians,” so universal to anyone who’s former armed forces. 

Keane’s focused on headcount, camp layout, cover for his primary fire team, finding a location not so far away that his secondary team can’t get in and shut it all down if it all goes to hell. 

Merrick, though, has other ideas. 

“It’s not a controlled experiment, Christ. It’s a setup; I want them exhausted and no fucking backup around when this happens. If they can come back from trekking across the fucking desert all day and all night, and come back from getting gunned down, then it’s more than worth the expense of getting it done.” 

“The expense of getting it done” turns out to be about $300,000 USD worth of equipment, setup, lighting, electronics and transport, plus a half-dozen Eritrean mercenaries hired on spec, who are barely briefed on the op. 

“They just have to make it look like the place is guarded, it doesn’t matter if they stop them or not,” Keane opines. 

It’s true, James supposes, but even the folks at the Company spent a little more time pretending like competence mattered, or that mercs-for-hire were anything other than gun fodder. He starts to say as much. 

“They’ll know something’s up if it’s too easy.”

Merrick chooses now to chime in, interrupting the caution James has been trying to give about some of the statistically impossible odds the group had beaten. “They’re only four people, who still fight with swords.” 

“Yes. They are. They’re four people, who have lived thousands of years, and who know that swords are useful when ammo runs out.” He manages not to roll his eyes, and keeps his tone neutral while Merrick’s still looking at him and not at the stock ticker or Slack chat or whatever else is at the side of his screen. 

Keane, at least, takes James’ point and offers some more ideas for guideposts, sightlines, etc., as well as the cover story of what the mercs are supposed to be doing. (Receiving and guarding a mixed shipment of food, medicine, and infrastructure supplies, to which they’re promised a cut. Not that the supplies are ever going to arrive, but every merc’s got a price and the price of those kind of supplies on the black market is better than gold.) 

Logistics and timeline agreed-upon, Copley finalizes the decoy plan, sends a copy to Keane, who scans it on his end of the call and nods in agreement, then signs off before he loses his patience. 

\--------

The meeting with Le Livre and Andromache the Scythian, (what do you call someone whose existence predates geography?) goes as he hopes, though there’s a moment when Le Livre looks like he’s going to chicken out, and another moment when the Scythian’s inspection of the plans on the tablet goes on long enough that he’s starting to worry that after all that back and forth with Merrick and Keane, it still looks too simplistic. The Scythian bites, though, and Le Livre keeps his end of the deal. 

After they walk away, James looks for di Genova’s and al Kaysani’s nest. He nods at the half-shuttered window 1200m northeast, at the edge of the medina. He hopes that he’s right-- otherwise he’s made himself out as a fool, and al Kaysani will suspect James is an idiot for not knowing where the sniper should be and call off the op. At least, that’s what James guesses; the historical record makes clear that Nicolo and Yusuf are inseparable, so James doesn’t suppose al Kaysani would tolerate any op that put his beloved at more than the usual risk. Right after he tips his imaginary hat, there’s a half-second flash of a scope-- he holds in a sigh. His time out of the game hasn’t changed him that much, after all. 

\--------

Compiling the footage is chilling. He knows, from Merrick’s perspective, that the money shot is the scene in the kill room-- the deaths and undeaths, with near-instant recovery enabling them to slaughter the fire team in a ballet that would be art, if he was more of a pretentious asshole and less of a person who understands that some things are just a means to an end. 

Still-- the whole of it is a gut punch-- how they deal death so quickly and in styles James knows are unknown today. With all his work these past years on the research end of things, he hasn’t even scratched the surface-- what he’s got in the footage here would make a practical archaeologist weep. The footage outside, though, where the low light cameras are posted-- it’s a chilling synchrony of efficient dispatch. Single shots, mostly-- very few of the double taps he’s accustomed to in working with U.S. and U.N.-allied forces. Di Genova doesn’t miss a single headshot, and al Kaysani skewers two guards in two seconds, then wipes off his blade and sheathes the scimitar back over his shoulder without breaking stride. Le Livre and the Scythian are so stealthy that it’s only on the fifth rewatch that he finds them. 

“Those poor bastards never stood a chance,” he realizes. He’d checked, and these particular mercs had taken part in enough atrocities that Merrick’s casually racist conflation of that poor, trapped animal with these actual animals hardly matters, but the longer this job develops, the more it smells like actual shit.

\---------

The fight at the church bears out his initial impression. The Scythian literally cuts through the entire second fire team. al Kaysani and di Genova, shackled and hampered, thoroughly dispatch all of their guards in the van. How dare James assume they had anything other than complete confidence that they can kill more people than can kill them. 

The cold dread of a job that’s completely fucked up settles in when Merrick furiously stabs al Kaysani. Merrick’s been clear, right from the start, even if James has been too blinded by his stupid grief to see it. This is no controlled experiment; this is just cat and mouse, Big Pharma style. Even if these ancients’ cells do hold the cure to disease, Merrick isn’t going to share the cure. He’s going to hoard it, wield it like a weapon with reckless malice. 

And James? What was his role in this? Anyone looking at him from the outside would call it what it was-- pure, cold, malicious Company calculation, collateral damage in some ever-moving, ever shifting playing field that moved the goalposts when they miscalculated-- and never looked back, never admitted mistakes. 

Those mercs might have been on the wrong side, but hasn’t all his research shown him that most people believe that they’re doing things (good or bad) for good reasons? Hasn’t he learned, either? These ... people, because demigods is a bit histrionic ... chose wrongly sometimes. They chose the right side far more often; they had taken the time and hindsight they were gifted to pick their jobs better. James, though-- he doesn’t have that kind of time, and he’s chosen not just badly, but evil. 

It’s easy to confess it all when the new one shows up. No matter how many times these people come back from the dead, nothing will bring his wife back. Even if it did-- she’d be disgusted with what he’s done in her name. 

He’ll have to do a lot more good to try to be worthy of forgiveness again. He starts with a call to his contact at MI-5 to ask them to hold off on a dispatch to Merrick's HQ-- asks him to hold off, on James' mark, to let this group do the good that they do, so well. He’s determined to make his own mark a good one as well.

**Author's Note:**

> I wondered at what point Copley realized he'd made a horrific mistake-- and my hope that it was long before Andy got shot on his living room carpet.
> 
> Title from the longer Martin Luther King, Jr. quote: “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”


End file.
